Bring! It! On!

T-Mobile’s plans involve using HSDPA to ramp up the data transfer rates of its 3G service from the current 384kbps to 1.8Mbps in 2006, and then onto 20Mbps by 2010. Better still, the service is completely open, and is offered at a flat rate of just

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This entry was posted on May 2, 2006 at 7:44 am and is filed under Pith. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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I much prefer GSM for regular cell phone use, especially when travelling internationally (buy a local pre-paid SIM card whereever you are, and you don’t pay for incoming calls). But my opinions are from the user end of things, he, unlike me, knows what he’s talking about.

Because of the latency and assymetry, EVDO is expressly not suited to any realtime application, including VOIP. Says so right in the introductory literature. The standard was developed with web surfing in mind.

Any cellular network faces several bandwidth issues. The assymetry of EVDO is one way of dealing with available RF spectrum. The next issue is wireside bandwidth; the size of the pipe running to the cell site. For voice only, you can run a low volume site off a shared T-1, busy ones may take two or three. Start marketing broadband to the home and the requirement jumps. T-Mobile buys wireside from a nominal competitor; their infrastructure is BTSs and BSCs only. The investment to do here what they are doing in England would be absolutely massive if the current source of T-1 backs out.

I’d be highly skeptical of the ‘unlimited’ part of the deal. Loads of people have run up against the limits of their supposedly ‘unlimited’ service. Usually the fine print says something like “except in the case of ‘abusive bandwidth use'”, and the definition of ‘abusive’ is whatever they say it is. So, where you see ‘unlimited’ it should read ‘arbitrary, undisclosed, and capricious limits’.

I personally work with EVDO devices in my day job – I know ALL about the limitations. Some of which, admittedly, are carrier-implemented. Please note that some carriers are more lax than others when it comes to acceptable use. OTOH, the freaking cable companies have the exact same kind of BS “unlimited” usage (except if they decide you’re abusing the privilege) limitations…

I don’t use a EVDO device on my own time (I’m stuck on the older 1xRTT network due to device limitations exacerbated by carrier stupidity when I’m mobile) but it’s still pretty nifty